South East QLD Farmer Viv Forbes writes:
As a farmer & chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition I am accusing the big farming lobby groups, government departments, politicians and Ministers representing agriculture of ignoring science and abandoning farmers to unjustified carbon taxation.
We believe there was no justification whatsoever for including emissions from farm animals in any carbon emissions tax scheme.
Every intelligent farmer can understand the carbon food cycle whereby every bit of carbon dioxide released by farm animals or plants into the atmosphere has previously been removed from the same atmosphere.
This simple process is surely not beyond the understanding of all the lobbyists, bureaucrats, researchers and media living off farmers?
In the farm sector carbon balance, apart from any fossil fuel used, it is a zero sum game, and all farm animals have ZERO NET CARBON EMISSIONS.
Grazing animals have not yet learned to live on coal or diesel fuel, and they cannot create carbon out of rocks, soil or water. Therefore they must extract it, via grasses and grains, from that marvellous gas of life in our atmosphere, carbon dioxide.
All foods and organic matter represent carbon that has been sequestered by life processes into living bodies.
Farm plants and animals are every bit as green as forests.
Both farms and forests extract carbon from the air and store it in organic life forms until that organic matter is burnt or decays in the open air, thus returning their borrowed carbon to the atmospheric storehouse.
Why then does growing forests attract a carbon credit and but growing cattle and sheep cops a carbon tax?
Australia and New Zealand lead the world in harvesting solar energy and carbon dioxide to produce an abundance of clean green food. Why then are both the New Zealand and the Australian governments proposing to force farm animals into their emissions trading quagmire?
And why are they subsidising the conversion of farmland producing food into forests producing nothing but carbon credits or crops producing ethanol motor fuel? What are future generations going to eat?
We are saying that farmers need to start agitating now or they risk being the only bunnies still paying carbon taxes.
Motorists who vote and use petrol will escape the carbon tax by sleight of hand - petrol excise will in future be called “carbon tax”.
Exporters will get an exemption to enable them to compete with more sensible regimes with no carbon taxes. Other protected species like working families in marginal electorates will get subsidies to cover carbon taxes on electricity bills.
Truckies will blockade the roads if politicians add carbon tax to diesel prices. That leaves farmers as the only big group with so few votes and such incompetent leadership that they will pay the carbon tax.
Farmers have been abandoned by Ag Force, the Meat and Livestock Authority, CSIRO, the National Party, and most of the similar organisations in New Zealand. It is not clear whether this is because of a lack of scientific logic or cowardice in the face of electoral hysteria on global warming.
But the politicians representing the treasured “working families” in the battling suburbs had better start taking notice of rising food prices or a more soundly based hysteria about the growing shortage of food will sweep emissions trading nonsense from the political landscape.
Viv Forbes, Farmer, BScApp, FAusIMM, FSIA
Chairman, The Carbon Sense Coalition
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Tags: Climate Change
Viv,
You are doing a mighty job. The pale immitation of John Howard as a puppet of the bureaurocacy will soon disintergrate.
Well said Viv,
I am going to upset a lot of farmers and graziers here, but the Farm lobby groups are made up of want to be politicians who are there to feather there own nests and puff there chests out. And the majority of farmers are “Gutless” and wont make a stand like the truckies are.
We should withhold all of our produce and starve all the city slickers, then they might change there mind on how they vote.
Because our vote means nothing and the electoral commission keeps changing the boundary’s to keep Labor in power.
The farmers should support the Truckies to keep there trucks off the road. Or better still the Millions of dollars that MLA rip off the cattlemen in there levys could be used for a fighting fund INSTEAD of going into the Pay Checks of FAT CAT MLA Board Members..
Well said Viv and Neil.
Frankly if Australia embarks on a carbon trading scheme, Australia can only become less competitive on the world trade stage.
How any scheme likely to be devised by the mostly legal/accounting bureaucrats in Canberra will ever account for what is happening to carbon in our environment is beyond imagination.
Isn’t it amazing that a tax can be devised on something that science still hasn’t quantified. Our politicians are so resourceful!!
Thanks John, and Neil and John.
Despite hesitation in the rest of the world, the lemming leaders in Canberra are rushing towards the big leap in 2010.
Farmers should not believe they are now safe. Not only will we get hit in the prices for food (we eat too), but all power and transport costs will go up.
And the zealots behind this movement want to eliminate farm animals - just check some UN and Peta literature.
We still need to kill this disease before it gets established.
Viv Forbes
Today we have Woodside Petroleum questioning carbon trading and its impact on the Australian economy.
Yet we hear nothing from the farming organisations in relation to carbon trading and its long term impact on agriculture in Australia. What is going on within farming organisations??
While agriculture is to be outside the loop until 2015, how many inputs to agriculture will increase in cost because of carbon trading/climate change levies etc etc. Once carbon trading is introduced everything will increase in cost.
Agriculture and all manufacturing in Australia will incur costs that our overseas competitors do not have. This will be good for Australia, our deficit is already $600 billion??
CHANGE THE TITLE
IT SHOULD READ; FARMERS ABANDON FARM LOBBY GROUPS
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE UNION OF FARMERS ?
Our oil is our 3rd biggest export after coal and iron ore..
1. coal hydrocarbon
2. iron ore = hydrocarbon to dig and transport
3. OIL
We giveaway our LNG to china for a few cents per litre…and pay nearly a dollar
We giveaway our Oil to Vietnam and Indonesia so they can cut it refine it or crack it and we buy it back $125 per barrell..
We could double emmissions today and double production and still be carbon tax free and neutral but nah hit em harder but smile and sympathise.
Food is now a weapon, fuel is a weapon, water is a weapon and now air itself is a weapon that can and does cause death injury pain and poverty.
We are net consumers of greenhouse gas not as the rest of the overpopulated undervegetated world is also benefiting from our production of up to a third 33% of the worlds food and raw materials at bargain basement prices.
read a history book the world has a regular history of flooding and tropical weather events….
this world changes and fights man on a daily basis…its coming round with or without you, the 747 and teevee and broadband just made it more public
Even the Artic used to be tropical with crocodiles..not so globally warm today is it
the carbon climate cult wont stop the frequency nor the return of iceages and warmer periods…sadly people think if they all jump together the world shakes…. but its really when the world shakes all the people jump.
Water is life
Light is Life
together with soil and mans gardening and seeding the Sun and Rain make Food
Food is Energy
Energy is Food
If you drive your car 100km with the same load the same way with half the fuel it dies..
If you carry your load the same way the same distance on half the food required you starve then die…
A 3000kj workload that eats 1800kj is starving itself eventually to death.
Any restriction on life is a crime causing death, causing food shortages or energy crisis or water crisis or t a x i n g life is a crime.
There is no shortage of food
There is no shortage of energy
UNLESS
You artificially restrict the supply and increase the price say with a $40 ton carbon tax to offset the worlds farting and breathing man made glabal warming conspiracy theorists and those working contributing nothing to global warming or any climate change are affected big time.
Then people cannot afford to grow the food or buy the food or transport the food or store or sell the food without massive increases.
It takes up to 10 times x the energy of the food itself to grow the food transport the food process the food store the food sell the food and buy the food and cook the food.
The worlds people have allowed the worlds food and energy to be gambled and sold bought and owned by the most rich most careless profit minded bloated ugly cruel and powerful minority group in the world.
Food is now a weapon, fuel is a weapon, water is a weapon and now air itself is a weapon that can and does cause death injury pain and poverty.
You forget the people are important, more so than man made theories designed to cripple industry and the food chain itself, the worlds population is increasing, we need to keep doing what we ALL do here without mindless restriction and loaded costs causing poverty and milking the people who are supplying the food and raw materials at barrgain basement prices, we decide by hands what happens and yet a few hands dont care yet they have the keys to the solution and choose to inflict more misery.
Its not crop substitution its called when you raise the price of diesel 75% everything EVERY THING goes up 75% and more fertiliser is petrochemical hydrocarbon based, tractors and trucks are INPUTS into food price costs…they ALL use Oil/Diesel.
Bio fuels are not responsible for oil prices, wars are..make a graph pre George W and where the Oil is today…count the President Vice President and Secretary of State 1.2..3 right then who hasnt got the OIL background ?
Our oil is our 3rd biggest export after coal and iron ore..
1. coal hydrocarbon
2. iron ore = hydrocarbon to dig and transport
3. OIL
We giveaway our LNG to china for a few cents per litre…and pay nearly a dollar
We giveaway our Oil to Vietnam and Indonesia so they can cut it refine it or crack it and we buy it back $125 per barrell..
The numbest dumbest bunch of gutless cowards in the world cant even give us our food and fuel for what it costs.
The mandarins want cheap supply but have increased input costs..it works as a multiplier not a reducer. Same with interest rates it feeds the fire it claims to put out. As it is another cost to input it becomes a output increase.
Then theres our electricity costs 6cents per kwh to produce at your friendly State owned supplier but sells it back to you the owner at nearly 20cents per kwh baaaaaaaaaa moooooo its okaaaay this is already a TAX and they want to add another T A X.
When$$ the carbon t a x hits around $40 a ton, you’ll need a
par lie mental pension to travel eat and heat.
Rather than trying to be one of the methane co2 greenhouse doomsayers
and be out of a job political or civil..or hungry or cold or in poverty
Why not recognise that whilst we can and will improve our efficiency Australians have the best record in the entire world;
5% of the world yet using just 2.5% of the emmissions.
5%-2.5 = +2.5% credit…wheres my credits someones stealing my credits someones forgotten my credits.
One acre of pine stores 1 ton of carbon per annum
In 200 billion acres we have more trees than what we need…
We are net consumers of greenhouse gas not as the rest of the overpopulated undervegetated world is also benefiting from our production of up to a third 33% of the worlds food and raw materials at bargain basement prices.
Even the corresponding imports of manufactured items are inflated x 5 and we pay dearly in giving it cheap and buying dearly.
Australia has not exploited its trees at the sake of the atmosphere we have 100 acres per Australian man woman and baby only 1.5% of it is urbanised this has trees also look around…only 7% is arable ploughable land this has many trees then the remainder is forest shrublands and native vegetation.
If Parliament carbon taxes australia its a crime, we are the greenest people on the planet despite our industry.
We need a referendum on man made global warming conspiracy theory.
Offsetting the poor and certain industries is only transferring the pain directly to working families those who pay and their employer or employment and dont forget your mates the third world which likes to eat at $2 a day…and gets very upset if they dont…
By the way theres 1.5 billion farting chainmen up north what do you suggest we do feed them or tell them shops shut ?
Theres plenty of opportunity to count the trees and divide by 21 million ..thank you
We could double emmissions today and double production and still be carbon tax free and neutral but nah hit em harder but smile and sympathise.
Just today newsflash plant a tree day 1 million trees got planted today here, our farmers have been doing more than this for years, tell Australia we can either get our credits or get a chainsaw
dADA DADA DADA DADA KLIMATE KEVVIE
AND HIS WONDER BOY…GREENHOUSE GARNUT
QUICK TO THE KLIMATE KAVE
WHERES THE KEYS TO THE KLIMATE KAR ?
THERE IN THE KOCKPIT
BRRRR ITS COLD KLIMATE KEVVIE
I KNOW GREENHOUSE GARNUT ITS CALLED WINTER
OH ITS GETTING WARM AGAIN KLIMATE KEVVIE
THATS BECAUSE I PUT THE ELECTRIC BLANKET ON
DID YOU BUY THE KARBON KREDITS FOR THAT
NO I TOOK A PHOTO OF FARMER FOOLS TREE AND SENT IT TO KAPTAIN KARBON..
IS THAT YOUR FOOT GREENHOUSE GARNUT
POW
BAM
TAX
SPEND
STAY TUNED
SAME KLIMATE KARBON KCHANNEL
SAME TAX TIME